Primal Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  She considered her options: an hour on a wretchedly smelly old bus without shocks, or Lopaka's kind offer. His smile is handsome, his eyes are a blue volcanic rock with a hint of shining mystery lurking there; promise and danger all rolled into one, she thinks.

  “I... I don't know, Lopaka.”

  “Please. I wanna do dis for you, Hiilani.”

  “But my boyfriend. He's a hothead, he's Samoan.”

  “Don't a bit worry me. I carry a weapon fo' protection.”

  “A weapon?” She is instantly curious.

  “Fo' protection only. Can't be too careful nowadays. I've got”—he hesitates, then whispers in her ear—”several knifes, swords even, some ceremonial ones but others quite useful, some Jap stickers.” Then he whispers, “I've also got some French and Colombian stuff, if you get me, some good smack, if you like— get high? I can make it happen fo' you, babe.”

  “No, no... I don't do dat kine stuff.”

  He shrugs. “I don't either,” he lied, “but I keep it round fo', you know, my aikanes.”

  “Here come my bus,” she says. “I betta say good night.”

  “Why're you afraid of me, Hiilani?”

  “Afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  “I'm not.”

  “Den why you no come wit' me?” He begins to whisper, seeing nearby a curiously large, wide-shouldered white woman with a lantern jaw listening intently to their conversation. “I'm not, really. I just don't wan-no problem with my boyfriend, you know?” she says.

  Lopaka at first gently presses her in their native tongue, and then begins an insistent tugging on her arm, trying to lead her away from the stop. He pleads almost childishly for her to come away with him, saying that she'd be surprised at what he could show her.

  “She said no, fella!” The surprisingly gruff voice, coming as it does from the heavyset white woman beside them, shocks Lopaka, as does the big woman's burrowing, searching eyes.

  “What?” he asks without thinking.

  “So buzz off,” replies the old lady.

  “No, please.” Hiilani quickly intervenes. “All right, Lopaka. I go with you, but you put me out a block from where I live and no argument?”

  “No argument, I promise,” he lies.

  Lopaka places an arm about her, and they stroll off down Muluhia Road toward Kalia Road and his car, Lopaka looking over his shoulder, curious to see the heavyset woman with the horse face stare after them. The bus arrives, however, and the nosey bitch gets aboard, so Lopaka turns his full attention to young Hiilani.

  The big woman who'd lumbered onto the bus and out the back door before it pulled from the curb now quick-stepped her awkward way amid the crowd of tourists and thrill-seekers who routinely milled about Waikiki's streets. Beneath the dress and makup, she was Sergeant Nathan “Bigfoot” Ivers. The HPD undercover cop now followed Lopaka and Hiilani, expecting nothing really to come of his hunch. He'd followed similar hunches now for days, working on his own time as well as the department's, his ear to the ground, anxious to learn anything he might regarding the sonofabitching Trade Winds/Cane Cutter who, it was rumored about police circles, was also responsible for the deaths of Officers Thom Hilani and Alan Kaniola.

  The getup Ivers wore tonight was particularly uncomfortable, his knee-length hosiery riding down while his skirt, a tent for anyone else, was riding up his hips. He hated decoy work, and he particularly hated wigs and makeup, but he'd do whatever necessary to get a line on the man who killed Alan Kaniola.

  The double murder of the two Hawaiian cops out at Koko Head had been a great personal loss for Ivers, who'd trained both of the dead men. Being Hilani's and Kaniola's training officer made it personal.

  Hilani was wet behind the ears, as was Kaniola, but both men had been levelheaded. Kaniola, in particular, was a deadly shot with his weapon, even from the hip! He was quick, intelligent and cautious, all traits which should have kept him alive. Ivers wondered if Hilani hadn't done something stupid to compromise Kaniola's good judgment and natural ability to handle himself. He'd really liked young Kaniola. There wasn't a prejudicial bone in Alan's body and he was always laughing, his eyes eternally smiling. He represented the best of the native Hawaiian, both open and friendly while shrewd and aloof when necessary, not to mention his physical virtues. Ivers believed his young protege would be angry if he'd survived to read the kind of crap that was being printed in his father's newspaper these days.

  Both Alan and Thom were dyed-in-the-wool police officers who didn't deserve what they'd gotten that night up at Koko crater.

  Ivers had been working a one-man crusade to get a line on Alan's killer, but it was as if the ocean had swallowed up the shooter/slasher who'd disfigured Kaniola so badly with that cane cutter. None of the usual tactics of shaking down known street lowlife had worked; no one knew the lone killer. The fiend was a modern-day Jack the Ripper who left no bodies and nary a clue, and he was apparently, as Ivers's FBI contact said, a loner, without attachments, either friend or foe.

  Hearing the guy called Lopaka call out the girl's name, Hiilani, had first caught Ivers's ear only because her name was so similar to Thom Hilani's. Then the guy just kept at her to take a ride with him, and while that alone might've been annoying enough, Ivers realized that the creep had been waiting for her to come off work, and that his car wasn't even on this block. When the hair on his neck stood on end, Ivers knew to listen to it. On a hunch, a kind of sixth sense, Ivers decided to follow the stocky, medium-sized man whom the young lady called Lopaka.

  He knew enough Hawaiian to catch bits and pieces of what they'd said in their native language, but he'd been unable to hear the whispers in her ear.

  He now scanned the avenue for any sign of the couple. He had lost sight of them in the milling crowd. Damned streets here were like a series of cattle cars filled to capacity. Hemmed in, Ivers used his huge purse to whack more than one person getting in his way, saying sorry in the sweetest tone he could muster.

  He wasn't even sure he was following the right path when he headed east toward Fort DeRussy, but he knew there were areas around the base where you could park for a limited time without getting a ticket. He played out his cards and came to within forty yards of a battered maroon Buick as it pulled away from the curb. Inside the car, he could see the doe-eyed Hawaiian honey who'd stood at the bus stop, and her eyes appeared glazed and unseeing now, her body rigid and unyielding, a stone mannequin behind the glass. Beside her was a grinning jackal whose eyes lit on Ivers. Something in his eyes told Ivers that if this wasn't the bloody Trade Winds Killer, he'd do until the real thing came along.

  Ivers raced now toward the Buick, recalling Alan Kaniola's brief description of the vehicle he'd followed the night he was murdered.

  The driver gunned the old engine, and it abruptly shut down on him, simultaneously sending a smile to Ivers's lips and a black soot cloud from the exhaust pipe. The exhaust cloud blanketed a foursome of sailors in their dress whites, who instantly erupted in a flurry of curses and tossed beer cans, the missiles richoceting off Lopaka's car. Ivers was coming full speed, the sailors whistling and gawking at him now. He confirmed that the passenger in the car was sedated, sitting zombielike, not seeing. The driver was cursing and banging on his dash.

  Ivers knew he had the Cane Cutter, and so he whipped out his revolver even as he ran toward the battered Buick, shouting, “Police. Step out of the vehicle!”

  But the Buick coughed into life and tore straight for Ivers, whose approach sent him into the vehicle even as it struck him, sending him to the right of the driver's side window, stunned and unconscious, his single reflex shot striking the rear left fender, ricocheting to put a hole through the gas tank.

  The smell of gasoline rose with the warm whoosh of air left in the wake of the speeding Buick. Ivers lay in the street unconscious, his dress hiked up to his thighs, some of the leaking gas lapping at his skirt, his Jockey shorts and knee-length hosiery displayed for all to see, his barrel-round legs spla
yed apart.

  Several of the sailors converged on him, one shouting for someone to call for an ambulance, a second trying to assess the damage, when a third tossed down his cigar. The gasoline ignited, turning one of the white-uniforms into an inferno, scattering the others. The fire raced to Ivers's prone form, engulfing him whole.

  Several of the sailors sat on their burning friend and beat the flames out while Ivers screamed in pain. One sailor tore off his white jacket and smothered Ivers with it, killing the flames that'd already badly burned him.

  “Call 911! Get a goddamned ambulance!”

  “Forget that!” shouted the sailor who'd saved Ivers. “Run into the Army hospital! Hell, it's right here!”

  In a few minutes a base hospital wagon screeched onto the scene and the medics took over. The sailor had minor burns, but Ivers was in shock.

  Police cars arrived with floodlights and sirens, backing onlookers away. The call for officer down had not gone out, no one knowing that the big man in drag was a cop until one of the medics scooped his wallet from a scorched purse and handed it to one of the policemen to notify next of kin.

  “Jesus, Steve, this guy's one of ours,” the cop said.

  The senior officer. Steve Fausti, stared at the badge and identification and then up at the ambulance with Ivers and the injured sailor as it raced for the nearby military hospital.

  “Nate Ivers, Midtown Unit,” said Phil Janklow, the younger officer.

  “Yeah, he's one of their training sergeants. What the hell gives? You think he's maybe queer?”

  The first cop shrugged. “If so, looks like he hustled the wrong sailor.”

  “What the hell happened here?” Fausti, now holding tightly to Ivers's wallet and pointing it like a weapon at the sailors, demanded of the three on the grass who were trying to sober up long enough to figure out just what had happened. “I want some fuckin' answers. What happened here?”

  “Ivers's service revolver,” said the younger of the two cops, approaching his partner with the gun. “One round discharged, still hot.”

  “Sure it's hot. There was a friggin' fire here,” said Fausti, pointing out the remaining flames that licked up from the pavement. The place was thick with gas fumes.

  The sailors helped one another from the grass, their whites stained with soot, oil, grass and what one termed grue. “You guys aren't going shipboard tonight,” Fausti assured them, and this sent up a group groan with expletives.

  “Fun and games over, boys. Now we can talk here, or you'll talk to a detective downtown. What's it going to be?”

  “Follow that gasoline trail, asshole,” said the sailor who'd saved Ivers from any further hurt, his white jacket missing. “That's the guy who hit-and-run your man.”

  A second sailor intervened, waving his arms, his freckled, Iowa farm-boy face as sooty and grass-stained as his uniform. “Your guy was playin' chicken with a '69 Buick sedan with bad tires and leakin' gas like a somma-bitch.”

  The third sailor, breathing into the cop's face, added, “Your guy pulled his gun. but the driver hit him before he could get a round off.”

  “That ain't right, Pete. He fired a shot,” said the jacketless one.

  “Slug must've hit the gas tank,” suggested the Iowa boy.

  Fausti turned to his partner and said, “You got that, Phil? This clown wants us to go away, to follow a gas leak.”

  “Goddamnit, that's how it went down. Your guy was trying to stop a car with his body.'“

  “How many in the car?”

  'Two, I think. Two was all I saw get in.”

  'Two?”

  “A guy and a babe.”

  “What'd they look like?”

  “Kanakas.”

  “What'd they look like?” Phil Janklow repeated his partner's question, ready to take notes on the answer.

  The sailor shrugged. “I tol' ya, kanakas. They all look alike to me.”

  Phil came over and whispered in his partner's ear. “Maybe we ought to try — “

  “Try? What the fuck're you talking' about, Phil? Try what?”

  'Try followin' that trail left by the gas leak.” He pointed to the lingering, scattered flames on the pavement.

  “Shit, Phil, we've got a crime scene on our hands here, and the book says we sit on it until homicide detectives arrive. What's going to happen to us if we go off like fuckin' Sherlock Holmes after a fuel slick?”

  “Homicide?” asked one sailor sober enough to overhear. “Attempted vehicular manslaughter, if you're telling the truth, sailor.”

  “Christ, what reason I got to lie for?”

  “Could maybe've happened another way.”

  “You can't take the word of three U.S. sailors?”

  “I wouldn't take the word of the whole damn Seventh Fleet, pal.” Fausti smiled, watching the sailors' dismay as they kicked about the earth and shook their heads. “It ain't in my job description. Just cool your heels until we can corroborate your story, okay?” He sent Phil into the crowd for anyone who'd volunteer as a witness, and Phil came back with a mix of white tourists, Japanese and Polynesians. They all bore out the sailors' account before the detectives arrived on scene. Fausti told his younger partner that they had done their jobs by the book, so nobody could find fault with the approach they'd taken at the scene.

  “Another night of fun in paradise,” said one of the HPD detectives who asked for a rundown from Fausti and his young partner.

  “Yes, sir... well, the hit-and-run victim was a training sergeant from Midtown, HPD.”

  “You don't say?”

  “Officer Nate Ivers, and he discharged his weapon at the assailant.”

  “Ivers? Christ, I know an Ivers,” said the second detective to his partner. “He's been on a one-man crusade for Kaniola's killer. Damned fool's gone off the deep end, Jack.”

  “Where'd you say he was taken?” asked the first detective.

  “DeRussy medics took him in there,” replied Phil, pointing.

  “Let's go see if he's conscious and talking.”

  Young Janklow pulled away from his partner's grasp, stopping the two detectives, informing them about the gas spill and asking, “You think maybe we ought to try to pick up the trail and follow it?”

  The detectives laughed in Phil's face, and without saying a word, they walked back to their unmarked cars, where they talked and laughed as if what Phil had said was the funniest joke they'd heard in years.

  “I told you to forget that shit, Phil. You sounded like the fuckin' Hardy Boys.” Fausti slapped his notebook closed and put it away.

  “If we'd got on it right away maybe—” You know how damned fast a fuel spill evaporates in this climate,” said Fausti, trying to ease the bruise to his partner's ego.

  “Yeah... well, that's the friggin' point, and all those bozos can do is laugh at us?”

  “You, partner... they were laughing at you.” Fausti turned to the crowd, shouting, “Okay, folks, show's over. Go'bout your business. Enjoy our fair city... the Jewel of the Pacific...”

  14

  Still falls the Rain-

  Dark as the world of man. black as our

  loss—

  Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails

  Upon the Cross.

  Dame Edith Sitwell

  1 A.M., July 17, somewhere in Honolulu

  Lopaka realizes when he reaches his dark little house that his tank has been emptied of gas, that the bullet fired by the cop must've put a hole through his fuel line or gas pan. It seems a miracle that the old Buick didn't explode with the impact of a .38 slug striking the gas tank. It must've passed clean through without rattling around in there. As it is, he has no way out later tonight to dispose of Hiilani's body, or tomorrow morning for that matter. He worries that someone at the fort might well have seen his license-plate number, that the authorities could be watching him at this very moment.

  He steels himself and walks around the car, ready for death by gunshot if it should come. He opens th
e door and pulls Hiilani's rigid form from the car. She is catatonic, thanks to the drug he's injected. The drug keeps her eyes open no matter how badly she'd like to close them, and as the drug wears down, she feels more, and the more she feels, the more she suffers, which means the more he enjoys himself, and the more he feels like a person of power, filled with the manhood Kelia and his father before her had thought to strip him of.

  He takes her into the killing place.

  No one stops him.

  No one comes crashing in for Hiilani.

  A fractional part of him, deep within his long-forgotten soul, long buried in a place in his heart where no light enters, on some wasted island within him, wishes that there was someone capable of stopping him... but nowadays such thoughts barely mature or fully form, broken shells of thought, wisps of smoke, incapable of surviving to the surface.

  He is safe to take out his feelings on Kelia once more, and the only one who has ever seen him for what he truly is now lies dead in the street in Waikiki.

  “Come, my sweet, dear Kelia,” he whispers in her ear as he restrains her with the human-hair coils of rope he has fashioned from the heads of earlier victims, restraints that dangle from large metal hoops nailed fast to the rack against the wall, a rack and wall discolored with the markings of his earlier kills.

  He restrains only her arms for now. Her eyes plea for mercy, but he has no mercy, only a plan for immortality.

  She screams, but the drug is yet too strong to allow full use of her vocal cords. The silent scream is enough to make his penis harden and his underpants wet.

  He nonetheless assures himself that what he does next is for the greater power of Ku, the power which he soon will join, to one day find his essence to be the same as the great god, to have mere mortals feeding sacrifices and offerings like Kelia to him.

  By now there is no Hiilani. She no longer exists in his mind or eye. She is Kelia, the all-perfect sacrifice.